Reflections on a Stapler

I earned my PhD in August of 1978, and began my professional career in October of that year. My first job was with a company that no longer exists, Westvaco Corporation. Among the office supplies issued to me was an ACCO 30 stapler. It was a heavy piece of steel, with a strip of tape on the top that said “DO NOT REMOVE FROM ROOM _ _ _” (I forget the number of the room). I never had heard of ACCO, only Swingline Staplers. Interestingly, ACCO owns the Swingline brand.

A few years later I was promoted and transferred to another laboratory. When I moved, I took the ACCO 30 with me. I justified this simply: Westvaco owned that stapler, and I was just moving from one Westvaco location to another. That’s not stealing. The interesting part of this story is why I had become so attached to that stapler. That, too, is simple: it never jammed. It may be that there was so much steel in that machine that a puny staple just had to succumb to the stapler. Whatever the reason, I had no intention of parting with that stapler.

A few years later I changed companies, joining the chemical division of Georgia-Pacific, which was incorporated at Georgia-Pacific Resins, Inc. By this time I had no reservations about taking the ACCO 30 with me. Surely it was fully depreciated by now, and of no value whatsoever to my former employer.

The stapler settled into my home office. I had one problem with it: the strip of tape that said “DO NOT REMOVE FROM ROOM _ _ _” (I still do not remember the number of the room). I thought it time, after 11 years, to remove that piece of tape that reminded me of my crime. Unfortunately, or perversely, fortunately, that tape was manufactured back in a time when tape adhesive actually adhered. The paper delaminated, but the adhesive held. To this day, there is a strip of delaminated paper firmly adhered to the back of the stapler. It will be there forever.

The ACCO 30 has been in every one of my home offices since 1989. It outlived the two companies I mentioned. Westvaco merged with the Mead Corporation, forming MeadWestvaco, which did not last very long. The combined company sold off the papers business group, forming a new company called NewPage. The linerboard and saturating kraft mill in North Charleston, SC was sold to Kapstone Paper and Packaging. The chemical division in North Charleston was sold to another company, which also acquired the paper chemicals portion of Georgia-Pacific Resins, Inc., my second employer! What was left of MeadWestvaco merged with Rock-Tenn, forming the company that sends me my pension check: WestRock.

The really interesting thing, to me, is that in 2012 ACCO bought MeadWestvaco’s Consumer and Office Products business. Hence the company that once owned my stapler is now partially owned by the company that produced my stapler.

I have to stop now. I can’t keep up with who owns what without a scorecard.